Working in professional services in the City almost certainly impacts your sleep. We're betting you wouldn't have found this post if it didn't!

Dream scenario. An ideal world where you are not forced to send out that deliverable at 3 or 4am. You consistently get home early and can sleep as long as you need. How long would that be? As with nearly every question about complex systems, the answer is: It depends…

Sleep is not just about how long you rest but also about how well your body and mind recover during that time. Scientists and health professionals agree on general guidelines for sleep duration but the exact amount of sleep needed varies depending on age, lifestyle, and health.

General Guidelines by Age

The below guidelines are based on the National Sleep Foundation’s Sleep Time Duration Recommendations and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Consensus Statement. One general pattern that can be observed is that we require less sleep the older we get. Below we have set out the recommended sleep times across age groups. If you'd like to skip to the next section, the TLDR is: 7 to 9 hours is the recommended sleep time per day for adults.

Newborns (0–3 months): 14–17 hours.

Newborns require extensive sleep to support rapid brain development and overall growth. A significant portion of their sleep is spent in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which is believed to play a crucial role in neural development. The phrase "sleep like a baby" isn't really reflective of how newborns actually sleep. Newborns have a high requirement for sleep but their sleep is very irregular with many bouts of waking up and falling asleep again.

Infants (4–11 months): 12–15 hours.

Sleep supports motor skill development and memory consolidation as infants begin engaging more actively with their environment.

Toddlers (1–2 years): 11–14 hours.

Toddlers transition from frequent naps to longer periods of nighttime sleep while maintaining growth and cognitive development.

Preschoolers (3–5 years): 10–13 hours.

Preschoolers need adequate sleep to support learning, emotional regulation, and physical growth, even as their overall sleep time decreases.

School-aged Children (6–13 years): 9–11 hours.

As children grow older, their brains mature and become more efficient at consolidating learning and memory during sleep.

Teenagers (14–17 years): 8–10 hours.

Hormonal changes during puberty increase sleep requirements, but social and academic demands often reduce actual sleep time.

Adults (18–64 years): 7–9 hours.

Sleep needs stabilise, supporting physical and mental health, stress management, and daily productivity.

Older Adults (65+ years): 7–8 hours.

Sleep architecture changes with age, often resulting in lighter, shorter sleep. However, maintaining quality sleep is essential for cognitive and physical health.

Why Sleep Needs Vary

Age and Development: As we can see from the above recommendations, sleep duration requirements increase the younger people are. Newborns, children and teenager require an extensive amount of sleep given they experience rapid growth, hormonal shifts, and brain development. All of these increase sleep requirements.

Health and Recovery:

Sleep needs increase during illness, stress, or physical exertion as the body works harder to repair and rejuvenate itself.

Genetics:

Studies suggest that genetics may influence how much sleep you need, with some people thriving on less sleep than others. If you're one of these people who can reliably power through on 7 hours of sleep, great for you!

So what?

For those of us (and by us we very much include us here at Somio…) who require more sleep, it is important that we make the most of the little rest time we get.

We don't want to waste that precious time off that we get tossing and turning in bed.

We want to sink into our pillow and the just wake up the next day rested.

Get an edge with our SleepBites to be able to do just that and keep up with those lunatics who just don't seem to sleep! Who knows, these guys may have simply found this website before you did…